Head of Exchange Infrastructure

Kraken; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 900,000 - 1,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Kraken is seeking a Head of Exchange Infrastructure to own the exchange layer, including the matching engine, core infra, API engine, and custody interfaces. You will lead a small, autonomous team of product managers and drive cross-functional alignment with engineering, risk, and compliance.

You will consolidate multiple matching engines into a single platform, starting with US derivatives and then expanding internationally, while maintaining live market integrity and high performance.

Qualifications

• Senior product leader with exchange, trading, or high-performance platform experience.
• Experience managing product managers on a senior-leaning team.
• Ability to define vision and translate it into a long-term roadmap.
• Strong understanding of matching engine and market data architecture.

Responsibilities

• Own the vision and roadmap for the exchange layer including matching engine and APIs.
• Lead and grow a team of four to five product managers.
• Consolidate multiple matching engines into one platform across regions and assets.
• Set success metrics (latency, throughput, uptime) and drive accountability.
• Coordinate migration with engineering leadership to avoid live-market disruption.
• Collaborate with Risk and Credit Infrastructure to enable a unified client account.
• Anticipate industry shifts and adapt the platform accordingly.
• Align product, engineering, risk, and compliance around exchange strategy.

Skills

Senior product leader

Exchange experience

Team management

Roadmap development

Low-latency systems

Crypto markets

Communication skills

Job description

Building the Future of Open Finance

Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

The team

Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients.

We're looking for a Head of Exchange Infrastructure to own the layer every Kraken product is built on: the matching engine, core infrastructure, third-party custody, the algo engine and the API engine. Kraken grew up as a set of vertically integrated products, each with its own engine and its own APIs. This role consolidates them into a single exchange stack that serves every product and every interface. You will lead a team of four to five product managers, partnered with an engineering manager. It is a senior, independent team, which means you get leverage quickly and you are expected to stay close to the work.

The opportunity

• Own the product vision and roadmap for the exchange layer: matching engine, core infrastructure, third-party custody, algo engine and API engine
• Lead and grow a team of four to five product managers, and set the bar for product craft across the layer
• Lead the consolidation of multiple matching engines into one, starting with US derivatives, then international derivatives, then spot
• Build interface-agnostic, so every product team and every interface can build on the same platform rather than their own
• Define success metrics (p99 latency, throughput, uptime, resiliency) and hold teams accountable to them
• Partner with engineering leaders across exchange and core infrastructure to sequence the migration without disrupting live markets
• Partner with Risk and Credit Infrastructure so a client can hold one account and trade every product against it
• Anticipate industry shifts and shape our platform to stay ahead
• Align cross-functional teams (product, engineering, risk, compliance) around the exchange strategy

What You Bring

• Senior product leader with experience in exchange, trading, or high-performance platforms
• Experience managing and developing product managers, on a team senior enough to run without you in the room
• Happy to be a player-coach. This team is independent, so you will own roadmaps and write specs yourself at times, not only review them
• Proven ability to set product vision and translate it into a long-term roadmap
• Strong understanding of matching engine and market data architecture, and the tradeoffs low latency forces
• Experience building platforms for internal customers, with the judgment to tell a platform from a series of bespoke builds
• Excellent communication skills - can influence technical and non-technical stakeholders
• A passion for crypto markets, market structure, and building the next generation of infrastructure

Nice to haves

• Engineering background before moving into product, so you've built or operated high-performance systems yourself and not just specced them
• Experience across both spot and derivatives venues, with the market structure differences that come with each
• Time at a crypto exchange operating at comparable scale, volume and uptime expectations
• Track record building platform roadmaps that interlock with adjacent product orgs rather than running in isolation

Our commitment

Payward is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate the diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions, and unique perspectives that everyone brings to the table. We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.

We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Results are considered alongside experience and interviews, and is not the sole basis for any employment decision.

As an equal opportunity employer, we don't tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.

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